Environmental Engineering Reference
In-Depth Information
are and will be increasingly called for, in close co-
ordination with biological conservation of specified
sites, protection of natural capital and more-integrated
use and management of land units allocated to supply-
ing goods and services to the cities. As explained above,
we refer to the tentacular and fractal peri-urban
landscapes that are mushrooming in all countries, even
as the human footprint deepens and broadens world-
wide (Sanderson
et al.
2002). In these urban-rural inter-
faces, people and nature meet face to face, so to speak,
and conflict resolution requires unusual diplomacy,
civic spirit and conceptual clarity if public as well as
private interests are to be defended adequately (Riley
1998, Benfield
et al.
2001, Postel & Richter 2003).
Concurrently, at higher scales, but lower resolution,
a context now exists where international conventions
on environmental issues of global concern oblige
European states to address very diffuse and large-scale
issues for which no clear market values have been
established and no private ownership or sovereignty
is overtly expressed. At these spatio-temporal scales,
resources and much of the land affected have low
(short-term) economic value, as defined by prevailing
economic models and accepted market practices
which flagrantly neglect the value of natural capital
and the cost - to all of us - of its reduction or destruc-
tion. Much of the territory concerned by this set of
contexts may have low or medium use and intensity
of transformation/degradation and the demand for pub-
lic investment and legislation is driven by such long-
term, broad-scale issues as biodiversity loss, climate
change and desertification. But at least some decision-
makers in the European Union clearly recognize that
our current situation is one of ecological 'overshoot'
(Wackernagel
et al.
2002) and multiple crises, and that
it requires our serious and immediate attention and
engagement at the planetary and all other scales.
In all the above-cited international issues, eco-
logical restoration and rehabilitation are expected
to play a critical role, in one way or another, but at
present that role is far from being explicit in the
relevant texts. Furthermore, an administrative and
legalistic device known as mitigation often permits priv-
ate interests, and some public administrations, to side-
step the critical issues and provide window-dressing
instead of meaningful restoration, conservation and
management. Yet, taking the long view, European and
indeed global society attitudes and policies concern-
ing nature have been changing steadily since the 1940s
at least, when the first international treaties aimed at
the protection of biological resources were signed; for
example, the first whaling convention of 1946, and
the Ramsar Convention on wetlands established in 1971
(www.ramsar.org). In 1972, the first United Nations (UN)
conference on environmental matters took place in
Stockholm and following the disastrous famines in
Sahelien Africa in the late 1960s the very widespread
menace of desertification was recognized at the
Nairobi Conference in 1977. In 1994, a United Nations
Convention to Combat Desertification (UNCCD) was
adopted by the officially affected countries (UNCCD
1994; www.unccd.int). Global organizing for trans-
national protection of nature, and nature's services,
took further shape with the creation of the UN's
World Charter for Nature (UN 1982), the Rio Declara-
tion on Environment and Development (UN 1992a),
Agenda 21 (UN 1992b) and the worldwide adoption
of the Convention on Biological Diversity in 1992-3
(CBD 2003; www.biodiv.org). In 1994, the UN Frame-
work Convention on Climate Change was adopted
(UNFCCC 1994; www.unfccc.int) and the controver-
sial Kyoto Protocol was launched in 1997 (UNFCCC
1997). All of these conventions place constraints on
the contracting parties (i.e. the signatory countries) and
in each nation politicians and administrators have to
make tough decisions regarding balancing the short-
term needs of people and society, and the general,
long-term need for sustainable management, conser-
vation and restoration of natural capital for future
generations.
Land-use change is one of the major factors affect-
ing ecosystem degradation and it should be one of
the drivers in increased investment in restoration.
Although land-use changes might be affected by
climate change in the long run, socio-economics is the
main recognized driving force for land-use change and
accepted levels of intensity and transformation. The
European scenarios for land-use change are quite
diverse, namely World Markets, Global Sustainability,
Provincial Enterprises and Local Sustainability (Parry
2000). Those scenarios yield very diverse outputs
affecting emissions, land-use changes and policies,
and their interactions. People's sensitivity to issues
of nature conservation and restoration will inevitably
evolve as well. Assuming that current trends of land
use are maintained over the next two or three
